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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the International Criminal Court has been asked to investigate allegations of abuse and torture by British soldiers over the years in Iraq. The alleged abuses are believed to have taken place between the years 2003 and 2008 and Lord Goldsmith was the Attorney General for much of that time and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Lord Goldsmith. I know when you left that post you called even then for a full enquiry into these issues.

LORD GOLDSMITH: These are difficult and sensitive issues. Our armed forces have done an absolutely fantastic job, often under very difficult circumstances but, if one sees allegations of abuse it is important to enquire into them and look at them and I did that when I was in office. I authorised some court proceedings and some court martials, I was very unpopular for doing it but I’m sure it’s the right thing to do because there were these isolated incidents.

DM: But that’s the point, isolated incidents. I mean the scale of these allegations are vast, there are around 1000 cases and up to 200 deaths in custody.

LORD GOLDSMITH: I am very surprised by this. I haven’t seen the dossier and I’d be very interested to see it but I know a lot of the things that are referred to are things that have been dealt with. You are quite right, I did call for further inquiry as did other people but the government responded, the armed forces responded so we have had inquiries, we’ve had court cases, we’ve had judge led inquiries – quite a lot of stuff has gone on.

DM: But there has been a lot of overlap hasn’t there, bits of Chilcot and then there is this Historic Abuse Tribunal as well, do we need an overarching UK based judge led public inquiry into this?

LORD GOLDSMITH: Well what the government decided to do and the Ministry of Defence decided to do was to have an Historic Abuse Team that would look at cases which required prosecution because they have got to be dealt with separately but also look at the rest of it under a judge led inquiry. It’s not straightforward because there are court cases, civil court cases too and sometimes they have to take precedence and it delays other things taking place. The problem I’ve got with what I’ve seen this morning is that in order for the ICC to be involved, two things need to be case. One is that there needs to be evidence of systematic war crimes, systematic abuse, not just isolated, there are a number of examples and secondly, it has to be the case that the UK is not either willing or able to deal with them themselves. That is one of the key things that was put in.

DM: Okay, so you’ve set out the parameters there, how do you think the International Criminal Court will treat it? It would just be incredibly embarrassing, would it not, for the UK to be up before the ICC?

LORD GOLDSMITH: Well of course it would. I understand and I only understand it from this report this morning that the ICC prosecutor or the court has already rejected one request to investigate this. The people who have put this forward, I’m sure well-intentioned but they say they have now got further evidence. I don't know what that is but I know that in the past the ICC has looked at these things, they know that they shouldn’t intervene if they know that a country is capable and willing to do what’s necessary itself and they would also have to satisfy this test of seeing that there is systematic abuse and although I’ve had concerns, I never saw evidence of systematic abuse, I never saw evidence for example – and that is what has surprised me today – that any senior politicians or even, for that matter, or even senior military figures were aware let alone authorised this. I think it is unfortunate that people who are out of office have these sorts of headlines against them so we’ll have to see. At the moment what’s happened is that there is a request to the ICC to look at this, we’ll have to see how they react to that.

DM: But it is possible, isn’t it, we know about the cases that have been discovered, some of those cases that are subject to proceedings at the moment, I mean you don’t find out about everything that goes on. It is the same way with investigating crime, not all the criminals who go to court are not all the criminals that exist. It could have been going on on a larger scale.

LORD GOLDSMITH: It could have been although there was quite a lot of investigation into this. I mean take the terrible, terrible Baha Mousa case, that came to me when I was in office, I authorised a prosecution in that case. There was a prosecution, it was a court martial, there was a conviction. People can argue about whether that was sufficient but still it was looked at and it was looked at quite hard. Quite a lot was also done to see whether the Royal Military Police needed additional resources so that they could look into these quite tricky areas. But you’re right, sometimes these things happen without them being seen but this is a case where allegations are being brought forward, they could be put to the Historic Allegations Team, they could be put to the prosecuting authorities in this country to say will you deal with them and only if it becomes apparent that they are not willing to would it perhaps be appropriate then to look at the ICC.

DM: And if it does end up there, then members of that government, senior members of that government could end up there giving evidence.

LORD GOLDSMITH: Well this is possible and when you are in government you accept that you have responsibilities for what you do and those don’t go away because you’ve left office, that’s absolutely right.

DM: Okay, Lord Goldsmith, thank you very much indeed for coming in. Very good to see you.